Chapter 38
GRANT
“Sloane has you on tape telling her not to put the real song title in the rehearsal package until Laurel was already at the showcase.”
Charles calls as I stand in the middle of an empty arena staring at the stage we’re supposed to open in six weeks, and for a few seconds all I hear is the electrical hum from the lighting rig and some asshole behind the curtain beating the same kick drum into the ground.
Half the sponsor banners that should be hanging from the upper concourse are missing.
Redwood pulled theirs first, Southern Crown followed, and production filled the gaps with generic tour graphics like nobody with functioning eyes is going to notice two corporations quietly peeling their names off anything attached to mine.
I turn away from the stage and jam the phone tighter to my ear. “You’re twisting the fuck out of what happened.”
Charles lets out a breath like he’s already sick of my shit.
“Outside counsel has the audio, Grant. Sloane sat for the proffer this morning with her attorney. No deal is on the table. No immunity has been promised on company claims, Laurel’s claims, the protective-order violation or anything else hanging over her head.
She hands over what she has, counsel decides how useful it is, and negotiations come after. ”
My jaw locks. “Play the fucking tape.”
A beat of silence, then another voice cuts in. Naomi Sutter. One of the independent lawyers Mercer brought in after the board decided I couldn’t be trusted within ten feet of my own investigation. She isn’t my lawyer, a distinction she seems to enjoy reminding me of every goddamn chance she gets.
“We will not be providing you with copies of the proffer materials at this stage,” she says. “You are a subject of the investigation.”
I stare out at the empty arena. “A subject.”
“Grant—”
“No, I heard her.” A bitter laugh scrapes out of me. “Just making sure I appreciate the fucking promotion.”
Less than two months ago, I was chief executive of Mercer Records. People waited outside my office for fifteen minutes of my time. Now some lawyer billing the company by the hour gets to tell me what evidence I’m allowed to hear in an investigation carrying my own goddamn name through the building.
Subject. Fuck me.
I stare out over thousands of dark seats people are still supposed to fill in six weeks and sing lyrics Laurel helped write, all while a room full of lawyers decides if I’m allowed to hear recordings of my own goddamn voice.
“Then tell me exactly what she handed over.”
Naomi does.
Sloane produced the original message thread from the week before the showcase; not screenshots. The full export from her old phone, pulled from an automatic backup I never knew existed. My message sits right under the original demo file.
Grant: Use the working title in rehearsals until set lock. L doesn’t need to hear Magnolia Rain before she’s in the room.
Sloane: Why?
Grant: She’ll make it sentimental and complicated. I already handled the clearance. Just sing the fucking song.
I remember sending every word, and that’s the fucking problem. I remember sitting in the back of an SUV outside Dallas with Laurel texting me a picture of the tomato plants she was trying to keep alive and Sloane bitching that production kept asking if they could circulate the real title.
Laurel had already told me she wasn’t coming to the showcase, so I figured I’d play her the song at home afterward, let her see the crowd reaction first, apologize for not telling her sooner and deal with whatever shit came next.
Then she showed up and fucked the whole plan.
I told myself the song belonged inside Mercer anyway. The admin agreement gave us room, Laurel got sentimental about old material, and I was saving all of us from a fight I didn’t feel like having.
I had an excuse for every goddamn part of it. After a point, even I stopped pretending they were true.
Naomi keeps going. Sloane also has a recording from after the showcase, once Laurel started asking questions about Magnolia Rain.
My own voice comes back to me through Naomi’s summary with sickening precision.
Grant: Do not send her the original email chain. Legal can reconstruct the clearance file from Mercer’s side.
Sloane asks if Laurel actually signed off on the song.
Grant: She signed the administration agreement. Shit’s enough for now.
Charles swears under his breath.
I massage my temple with two fingers.
Naomi’s voice never changes. “Your statement is inconsistent with what you told the board. You said you believed the song had been cleared through ordinary publishing administration and that you had no reason to think Laurel’s rights were being affected.”
“I did believe the fucking agreement covered it.”
“Then why hide the title from your wife?”
“Because Laurel gets emotional about old songs.”
Silence.
Brutal fucking silence.
And Jesus Christ, I hear it. Hear how shitty it sounds the second the words leave my mouth, but some diseased part of my brain still wants to keep talking, keep stacking explanations on top of each other until one of them magically turns me into the guy who didn’t know exactly what the fuck he was doing.
“She wrote it when we were broke. The song was personal to her. I knew she’d have a reaction before she even heard what Sloane did with it.”
Naomi doesn’t give me an inch. “You understand that characterizing the songwriter’s attachment to her own work as an inconvenience you deliberately worked around does not help your position.”
A laugh cuts out of me. “My position.”
“Would you prefer breach of fiduciary duty?”
“Grant,” Charles snaps.
“What? She’s the one dressing this shit up like a board memo.”
Naomi keeps going. “There’s more.”
Sloane doesn’t save her own ass by handing over the rest. If anything, she just makes the record cleaner on how willingly she went along with it.
The messages show her asking if Laurel knows she’s recording the song, me telling her not to worry about Laurel, then Sloane firing back a laughing emoji and she’s going to hate me.
My reply sits right under it.
Grant: She’ll get over it.
There’s another audio file from a hotel room. Sloane asks what happens if Laurel starts digging through the old registrations and notices my name sitting where hers should be.
Grant: The metadata’s being cleaned up and Mercer controls the admin file. Nobody is stealing anything. If Laurel ever wants the song back, we’ll deal with it.
Naomi gets very fucking interested in cleaning the metadata.
Daniel has already told investigators his involvement with Laurel’s catalogue never included changing ownership or authorship. The work he handled years ago was administrative, and later, at my direction, keeping outside offers away from her.
Magnolia Rain is a different fucking problem.
The technical review shows Laurel’s name and original creation date preserved inside the old demo files. Somewhere later in Mercer’s internal system, the public-facing registration changes and mine appears where hers should be.
So now cleaning the metadata isn’t some throwaway shit I said in a hotel room; it’s sitting under a legal heading making me sound guilty as fuck.
I keep learning the same lesson. Say something casually, give a lawyer six weeks, and they’ll hand it back radioactive.
“Is anyone alleging criminal conduct?” I ask, since there is apparently a point where arrogance learns to check for cliffs.
Charles cuts in before Naomi gets the chance. “No prosecutor is on this call. You are not being charged with anything. Stop acting like avoiding handcuffs means the day went well.”
The independent committee is looking at civil exposure now: fixing registrations, accounting for income, paying affected rights holders, dealing with the lenders and deciding if Mercer should come after any executive whose intentional conduct dumped those costs on the company.
The D&O carrier has already sent a reservation-of-rights letter, which is lawyer language for we may leave your ass holding the bill if this turns out to be deliberate.
So if Mercer decides I knowingly caused any part of this, the company can come after me and the insurer can tell me to go fuck myself.
“How much exposure?”
Naomi won’t give me a number. Charles will.
Lender fees. Legal bills. Restatement costs. Catalogue claims. Whatever the hell this does to valuation inside the divorce.
“Millions,” he says.
I leave the stage and head for the tunnel, passing crew members who find urgent business in cables and clipboards the second I come near. One of the tour managers intercepts me halfway there.
“Are we still doing the full pyro package for the November dates?”
I almost laugh in his face. “Ask production.”
He nods and moves on.
Months ago, he would’ve asked me. My name is still on the tickets, forty feet high on the artwork outside, the same name expected to put thousands of asses in these seats, but I’m becoming the last person anyone needs permission from.
Behind me, the opening chords of one of Laurel’s songs roll through the arena for sound check.
I stop dead. A stagehand damn near walks into me.
The song is Northbound, the one Laurel wrote in our second year together after we spent a week fighting because I took a shitty opening slot without asking if she wanted to lose another month to roadside motels.
She wrote the chorus pissed at me. I heard it through the bathroom door, and by the end of the night we were sitting cross-legged on motel carpet arguing over the bridge like the fight had never happened. My name ended up on the record because I changed three lines and reworked part of the melody.
Her share should’ve been larger, a thought arriving years too late to be worth a fucking thing.
I stand in the tunnel listening to my band play a piece of our marriage to an empty arena when my phone vibrates with a message.
Tessa: Do not respond publicly to the Bellamy registration.
I call her immediately, since instructions not to do something remain the fastest possible way to guarantee my attention.